Wednesday, 6 January 2016

Art Block - Borderline

Article by KevW

Last year, East London singer-songwriter Art Block released his debut EP 'Los Feliz', and it's shortly to be followed by a second offering, 'Borderline', and the title-track really is a thing of beauty. The amount of comments it's already attracted on SoundCloud (not to mention a large amount of followers) is hugely impressive and could indicate that Art Block is in with a strong chance of breaking through and going on to mainstream success. If the rest of the EP follows suit and momentum builds then a label might just come knocking.

It may seem like a strange thing to say, but 'Borderline' is probably too good for the mainstream, as so few tracks of this calibre or style make much of a dent in the top 40, but with a bit of luck he can buck the trend. That slightly cliched adjective "haunting" applies very much here, but there's no reliance on grandiose arrangements to give this the full and powerful sound that it has, with a sublime vocal and pained guitar doing much of the work on their own. In fact, adding more, such as string sections, might even detract from the strengths that Art Block has. This should be the start of a brilliant career.